Endocrine Abstracts

Decrum’s disease or adiposis dolorasa is a rare progressive syndrome of unknown aetiology. It is characterised by painful fatty deposits, general obesity, weakness and unexplained emotional disturbance.1We describe a case of a 55-year-old man who presented with pneumonia. On examination he was noted to be overweight and have multiple skin nodules. His chest X-ray was abnormal; he underwent further workup with a CT thorax/abdomen/pelvis. T...

Smart insulin pen technology offers insights into insulin dosing frequency and adherence patterns to assist patients and healthcare professions in treatment planning and diabetes control. We aimed to audit insulin smart pen use and glycaemic outcomes in a cohort of adults with diabetes attending a tertiary level diabetes centre. People with diabetes who were given insulin smart pens (NovoPen 6 or Novopen Echo Plus) in our centre were included in this audit. Clinical informatio...

Case history: A 58 year old woman presented to her GP when her family members noted prominence of her left eye. She had a background history of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Her main symptom of PCOS was hirsutism. She had been treated initially with the combined oral contraceptive pill ‘Dianette’ (ethinyloestradiol/cyproterone) but had also been treated intermittently with varying doses of 25–100 mg cyproterone acetate (CPA) 10 days/cycle. Post menopause she...

Pregnancy for women with type 1 or type 2 diabetes is a high-risk time. The Atlantic diabetes in pregnancy (DIP) programme aims to provide coordinated, optimal evidence-based clinical care for women with diabetes over five hospital centres in the West of Ireland. After previously auditing pregnancy outcomes in 2008 and again in 2011 we now look at our 10-year outcomes. Changes in clinical care delivery that have occurred over that time include; the provision of dedicated combi...

We present a case of a thirty year old female with a history of primary amenorrhoea due to hypogonadotropic hypogonadism (HH) who was further investigated as family history revealed a brother and sister with normosmic hypogonadotropic hypogonadism due to a homozygous pathogenic variant c.1195T>A in the KISS1 receptor gene. Our patient carried the same homozygous mutation, and both parents (unrelated) were heterozygous carriers. KISS1-receptor mutations are a rare cause of ...

Introduction: Patients with Diabetes have a higher risk of lower urinary tract dysfunction/symptoms (LUTS) compared to those without diabetes. Causative factors include autonomic, detrusor, and urothelial dysfunction, microvascular ischaemic changes, and glycosuria. With a shift towards holistic diabetes management, this study examined whether urinary dysfunction is routinely addressed in outpatient settings and whether Diabetes speciality teams feel equipped to manage this is...

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a multifactorial, complex endocrine disorder affecting a significant proportion of the global population. Hyperandrogenism is a key feature of PCOS patients. Aberrant secretion and/or action of gonadotropins have been implicated in PCOS, but, to date, we have only limited knowledge of how these factors may interact in the aetiology of PCOS. We hypothesised that excess androgens may cause aberrant gonadotropin activity and therefore sought to...

Background: The combined effect of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated restrictions have adversely affected population mental health. Periods of psychological distress can induce menstrual dysfunction. We previously demonstrated a significant disruption in women’s reproductive health during the first 6 months of the pandemic. The present study investigates longer term reproductive and mental health disturbances.Materials and Methods: An online surv...

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected population mental health. In April 2021 we conducted an observational study which demonstrated disruption in women’s reproductive and mental health during the first year of the pandemic. Our objective therefore was to perform follow up studies in this cohort of women at 6-monthly intervals, to assess the longer term enduring impact of the pandemic on reproductive and mental health.Materials/Me...

Defects in any of the four functional domains of the androgen receptor (AR) (resulting from loss-of-function or gain-of-function mutations), may affect androgen action. Specific AR splice variants have been reported in women with PCOS (Wang et al, PNAS 2015 112 4743). In this study we sought to identify AR splice variants in granulosa-lutein (GL) cells of women with and without PCOS and to assess their functional significance. GL cells were ...